Question What are you using for DNS?

Nov 17, 2019
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Do you use the ISP's default, or do you set one manually? I've tried both using various public servers and I really haven't seen much difference.
 

klinkman

Member
Jul 13, 2006
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I havent used ISP's dns in a long time. I used google (8888, 8844) for a while and currently use opendns. But i agree with you, havent noticed much if any difference.
 

solidsnake1298

Senior member
Aug 7, 2009
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I don't know if this is still true now, but back maybe 10 years ago I tried using OpenDNS on a FIOS connection. It definitely worked better than Verizon's DNS at the time for WEBPAGES. But I noticed that Youtube/Netflix/Hulu had trouble maintaining a steady stream. Frequent buffering. Switching back to the Verizon DNS fixed that immediately.

The consensus at the time was that OpenDNS did not always route users to the optimal edge of each streaming service's CDN. And that video streams were traveling much farther, over many more hops and bottlenecks, to get to users.

Again, this is my anecdotal experience and it may no longer be true.
 

solidsnake1298

Senior member
Aug 7, 2009
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I think you need to make an account on OpenDNS now and change the parental control settings. I'm pretty sure the default is to block sites with mature/non-family-friendly content.
 

mxnerd

Diamond Member
Jul 6, 2007
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I am using this:

on a RasberryPi 4 8GB, which is kinda overkill as you can easily get away with a 4GB one.
But it works great, especially since it has adware filters on it, and catches some spam.
You can try DietPi which can run Pi-Hole (or AdGuard Home) along with a lot of other software and not wasting your 8GB ram.

 
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ch33zw1z

Lifer
Nov 4, 2004
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Pi-hole is a filter no? I guess it acts as local dns server.

Yea, it is, but you give it an upstream source for DNS requests. I've been using quad9 filtered for a while, only had a problem once for a few hours.

I use two for redundancy, 4GB models, you could use a 1 or 2GB model with no resource problems AFAICT. The 4GB model runs with low memory usage
 

aigomorla

CPU, Cases&Cooling Mod PC Gaming Mod Elite Member
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Sep 28, 2005
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You can try DietPi which can run Pi-Hole

yup i am running dietpi..
which is why i stated 8gb is way too much... lol.
have the other programs but i really do not use it other then its normal DNS. :T
Even had a shiny oled tiny as heck screen for it, but pulled it out because it was adding heat, and i again, never really used it.
I'll leave the LED screened network gear to my ubiquiti stuff.

Pi-hole is a filter no? I guess it acts as local dns server.

its a forwarder which has its own ip address.
Its really very cool for what it does, and its worth what it costs with so much adware spam these days.
Its sort of almost like having ublock origin on your entire internet, even blocking nasty stuff on your phone while your on wifi.

And yes its noticable, you notice all the extra spam stuff you get outside your network without a pihole.

I can not think of a reason outside "i am not anywhere network competent to set one up" that you shouldn't have one.

I have internal DNS Servers for resolving my lab gear, but those forward to the Cloudflare DNS Servers for answers they don't have cached.

I used to do this on windows server.
Had a little box running DNS / DHCP because i never trusted routers and not failing.
(Well its not there fault, i was hammering with torrents back in the days.)

But came to the conclusion after several years, unless your making a massive amount of DNS request, you really did not need a dedicated box to resolve dns.

Google never gets congested, pings are always stable.
CloudFlare is CloudFlare.
Again, unless your pings to the DNS servers are horrid junk by ISP, i really do not think you need one for a setting of less then 25 machines, IMO.
 
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sdifox

No Lifer
Sep 30, 2005
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Yea, it is, but you give it an upstream source for DNS requests. I've been using quad9 filtered for a while, only had a problem once for a few hours.

I use two for redundancy, 4GB models, you could use a 1 or 2GB model with no resource problems AFAICT. The 4GB model runs with low memory usage


I am on pfsense and pfblockerng
 
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Nov 17, 2019
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We seem to have gone into some kind of phht hole. Are your diet pis cherry or apple?

Meanwhile ....

I try to avoid the Evil G as much as possible. I tried 1.1.1.1 for a while and a few others.
 

ch33zw1z

Lifer
Nov 4, 2004
37,759
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We seem to have gone into some kind of phht hole. Are your diet pis cherry or apple?

Meanwhile ....

I try to avoid the Evil G as much as possible. I tried 1.1.1.1 for a while and a few others.

There's quite a few dns services. Google, open dns (Cisco) and cloudflare being the most popular afaik. I stumbled across quad9 because pihole had it as an option.

The pihole is like a middleman for your dns, it caches / forwards and filters out spam that's link into pages or services you're using.
 

aigomorla

CPU, Cases&Cooling Mod PC Gaming Mod Elite Member
Super Moderator
Sep 28, 2005
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I use Quad9 because it doesn't censor or filter stuff that big bro isp thinks we shouldn't be surfing.
My primary is actually Quad9, and my failovers is cloudflare and google.

We seem to have gone into some kind of phht hole. Are your diet pis cherry or apple?

Well pihole is a DNS, so it fits in topic.
Also amazingly not many people even know about DNS level Ad filtering.
You say adblock, they think browser addon.

DNS level blocking goes way beyond, even down to the annoying ads on your apps on your phone.
 

fkoehler

Member
Feb 29, 2008
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Do a search for DNS Benchmark. There are Win and Linux clients.
Run it, and it will test a multitude of DNS providers and give you the best results from your machine.
Once you have that list, you can pick on speed, or other specific criteria.

I think I ended up using 1.0.0.1 Cloudflare's secondary and 9.9.9.9